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“I’m coming u better be ready cuz its gonna be a late night!” Jelena Loncar wrote to friend Shannel Rogers, hours before she was shot in the club district

Shannel Rogers, right, is consoled by Katherine Amanda Newton at their downtown Toronto condo. The two friends comforted Jelena Loncar the morning she was fatally struck by a single bullet. (Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Shannel Rogers, right, is consoled by Katherine Amanda Newton at their downtown Toronto condo. The two friends comforted Jelena Loncar the morning she was fatally struck by a single bullet. (Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Chaos followed the bullets fired outside C Lounge Tuesday morning. Disoriented partiers — some initially believing the cracks and pops had been firecrackers — spread out, confused and afraid. Near the door to the downtown bar, unmoving on the road, lay 32-year-old Jelena Loncar.

Through the crowd, the club’s guest DJ Monday night, Shannel Rogers, who was celebrating her 27th birthday, spotted her friend lying on the pavement and rushed over.

It wasn’t immediately evident that Loncar had been shot, Rogers said. “Everybody thought she had just passed out.”

Rogers noticed drops of blood on Loncar’s shirt. She says she lifted it up and found a small gunshot wound on her friend’s chest.

“I held her in my arms. She was trying to breathe,” Rogers said, sobbing throughout an interview Wednesday. “I said, ‘Don’t go, please don’t go.’”

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Loncar, a bartender who had just worked a shift at downtown bar Hunters Landing, was fatally struck by a single bullet just after 3:11 a.m. Tuesday, near the entrance of C Lounge nightclub at Wellington St. W. and Spadina Ave.

A 25-year-old man was also shot between five and six times. He fled the scene on foot to a nearby gas station, leaving blood in his wake.

Lead investigator Det. Sgt. Debbie Harris said in an email Wednesday night that interviews are ongoing and surveillance footage is still being reviewed, but at this stage “there is no indication that Jelena was targeted.”

“She was not known to police and has strong ties with the community,” she wrote, adding that it is not yet known if the male victim was targeted.

Harris said investigators have not determined if there was more than one shooter, but said several witnesses saw a “group of males” in the area of the gunfire.

On Tuesday, Halifax’s Chronicle Herald identified the male victim as Tremaine Fraser, a former Cape Breton University basketball player originally from the Nova Scotia community of North Preston.

Toronto police said earlier that the male victim was known to them. According to news reports, Fraser was arrested after a shooting in Dartmouth, N.S., in the spring of 2011, and charged with 14 gun-related offences, but they were dropped in February 2012.

About 100 people attended the party Monday and early Tuesday, known as “industry” night for the city’s waiters and bartenders. Rogers, a DJ who goes by the stage name Shannel Best, had invited many of her friends to hear her set and celebrate her birthday.

She had asked Loncar — a friend she met a few years ago, while working in a Toronto bar — to join in the festivities and was happy when she saw a text from her early Monday.

“I’m coming u better be ready cuz its gonna be a late night!” Loncar wrote at 5:21 p.m. “Sooo excited.”

Rogers and friend Katherine Amanda Newton both say Loncar didn’t arrive at the C Lounge until 3 a.m., when the bar had closed.

Both women saw Loncar a few moments before the shooting — she had run up to Rogers to say happy birthday, they say — and said she was walking towards a car when she was struck by the bullet.

Neither woman saw a shooter, or knows what connection Loncar may have had to the injured man. They are convinced Loncar was struck accidentally.

“Her goal was always to make people happy and she was such a happy person,” Rogers said. “She didn’t deserve this.”

Originally from Croatia, Loncar grew up in Niagara Falls, Ont. and had been living in Toronto with her sister for the last few years, friends said.

Rogers is trying not to blame herself for inviting Loncar out Monday night, but admits she keeps running through scenarios where the night could have ended differently.

“I wish I could have done more ... I want justice for her,” she said.

Rogers wants Loncar’s family to know she was not alone on the road — that she and Newton stayed with her, holding her hand and talking to her, telling her it was going to be OK.

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